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You Realize That People Take Drugs Because It's The Only Real Personal Adventure Left To Them In Their Time-constrained, Law-and-order, Property-lined World. It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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You Realize That People

Chuck Palahniuk

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You Realize That People Take Drugs Because It's The Only Real Personal Adventure Left To Them In Their Time-constrained, Law-and-order, Property-lined World. It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

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I Am Not Loved. I Am Not A Beautiful Soul. I Am Not A Good-natured, Giving Person. I Am Not Anybody's Savior.

I Could Imagine Myself Becoming One Of Marla's Stories.

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Give Me Rampant Intellectualism As A Coping Mechanism.

Coping Mechanisms

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Alternating The Thoughtful Task Of Writing With The Mindless Work Of Laundry Or Dish Washing Will Give You The Breaks You Need For New Ideas And Insights To Occur. If You Don't Know What Comes Next In The Story... Clean Your Toilet. Change The Bed Sheets. For Christ Sakes, Dust The Computer. A Better Idea Will Come.

Reality Means You Live Until You Die. The Real Truth Is Nobody Wants Reality.

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So If Reality Is All A Spell, And You Don't Really Want What You Think You Want... If You Have No Free Will. You Don't Really Know What You Know. You Don't Really Love Who You Only Think You Love. What Do You Have Left To Live For?

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When I See People Talking On The Internet About Me Or My Work It's Almost Always More A Description Of Themselves And So I Never Really Think Of Myself As Anything More Than Just Who I Always Was.

I Really Believe It's The Moments We Can't Talk About That Become The Rest Of Our Lives. It's The Moments We Can't Process By Telling A Story That Destroy Us In The End.

Control The Things You Can Control. As For The Rest - God Bless It All.

Things You Can Control

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We Can Spend Our Lives Letting The World Tell Us Who We Are…or We Can Decide For Ourselves.

You Turn Up Your Music To Hide The Noise. Other People Turn Up Their Music To Hide Yours. You Turn Up Yours Again. Everyone Buys A Bigger Stereo System. This Is The Arms Race Of Sound. You Don't Win With A Lot Of Treble.

Tyler's Words Coming Out Of My Mouth. I Used To Be Such A Nice Person.

I Think That Young People Are Less Attached To Items And Objects Now. They're Less Attached To Consuming Things And Accruing Things Because They See It As A System That Doesn't Necessarily Work And Give Them A Sense Of Adulthood And Fulfillment. They're Much More In Tune With Wanting To Achieve A Skill, A Form Of Self-expression, Or A Body Of Knowledge That Fulfills The Same Function, Fulfills Their Adulthood.

It's Just The Biggest Mistake I Could Think To Make

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The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

If You Died Right Now, How Would You Feel About Your Life?

Hope Is Something Really Tough And Tenacious You Have To Give Up. It’s An Addiction To Break.

A Writer's Job Is To Cultivate What Can Go Wrong. You're Always Looking For That Dramatic Arc Of Where Things Can Fail.

I Have To Have Everything In My Life Completely Fixed And Perfect And Cleaned Up And I Have To Be Complete With Everyone In My Life And I Have Seven Days In Which To Do That. So I Might Make It To Day Three Or Four, But I've Never Made It All The Way To Day Seven.

When You Understand, That What You're Telling Is Just A Story. It Isn't Happening Anymore. When You Realize The Story You're Telling Is Just Words, When You Can Just Crumble Up And Throw Your Past In The Trashcan, Then We'll Figure Out Who You're Going To Be.

Invisible Monsters

During The First World War, I Told Her, Hitler Had Been A Runner, Delivering Messages Between The German Trenches, And He Was Disgusted By Seeing His Fellow Soldiers Visit French Brothels. To Keep The Aryan Bloodlines Pure,and Prevent The Spread Of Venereal Disease, He Commissioned An Inflatable Doll That Nazi Troops Could Take Into Battle. Hitler Himself Designed The Dolls To Have Blond Hair And Large Breasts. The Allied Firebombing Of Dresden Destroyed The Factory Before The Dolls Could Ever Go Into Wide Distribution.

There's Still A Thousand Places I Haven't Gone To Die.

Pretty Much Always. We Need To Tell The Story Of Our Life To Someone.

You Have To Keep Recycling Yourself.

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

How Folks Lay Claim To A Loved One Is They Give You A Name Of Their Own. They Figure To Label You As Their Property.

Since Change Is Constant, You Wonder If People Crave Death Because It's The Only Way They Can Get Anything Really Finished.

I Always Thought I'd Write When I Retired - When I Turned 65. But By The Time I Was 33, To Tell You The Truth, I Was A Little Bored With Drugs And Sex, And I Thought I'd Do The Writing Thing.

There's A Moment In Every Book When The Book Turns And It Surprises Me.

No, Miss Wright Didn't Want To Meet Her Kid. To Her, That Relationship Was Just As Important, Just As Ideal And Impossible As It Would Be To The Child. She'd Expect That Young Man To Be Perfect, Smart, And Talented, Everything To Compensate For All The Mistakes That She'd Made. The Whole Wasted, Unhappy Mess Of Her Life.

Not Everything Is About Money. You Didn't Even Say, Hello. You Are Not Your Sad Little Wallet.

When We Die, These Are The Stories Still On Our Lips. The Stories We’ll Only Tell Strangers, Someplace Private In The Padded Cell Of Midnight. These Important Stories, We Rehearse Them For Years In Our Head But Never Tell. These Stories Are Ghosts, Bringing People Back From The Dead. Just For A Moment. For A Visit. Every Story Is A Ghost.

And I Can't Stand The Idea Of Being Alone. I Can't Bear The Thought Of Being Free.

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.

Also Consider That Someday, When You’re Dead And Rotted, Kids With Their Baby Teeth Will Sit In Their Time-geography Class And Laugh About How Stupid You Were.

The Best Fights Don't Occur Between Strangers. They Occur Between Friends Who Trust Each Other.

Am I Sleeping? Have I Slept At All? This Is Insomnia.

An Important Part Of Building A New Culture Was Allowing People To Complain About Their Past. At First, The More They Complained, The Worse The Past Would Seem. But By Venting, People Could Start To Resolve The Past. By Bitching And Bitching And Bitching, They Could Exhaust The Drama Of Their Own Horror Stories. Grow Bored. Only Then Could They Accept A New Story For Their Lives. Move Forward.

This Is The Worst Problem With Living History Museums. They Always Leave The Best Parts Out. Like Typhus. And Opium. And Scarlet Letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

The Big Reason Why Folks Leave A Small Town,' Rant Used To Say, 'is So They Can Moon Over The Idea Of Going Back. And The Reason They Stay Put Is So They Can Moon About Getting Out.' Rant Meant That No One Is Happy, Anywhere.

It's So Hard To Forget Pain, But It's Even Harder To Remember Sweetness. We Have No Scar To Show For Happiness. We Learn So Little From Peace.

In Good Old Colonial Dunsboro, Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill. It Is In Most Jobs.

I Would Say Any Behavior That Is Not The Status Quo Is Interpreted As Insanity, When, In Fact, It Might Actually Be Enlightenment. Insanity Is Sorta In The Eye Of The Beholder.

The Truth Is, Every Son Raised By A Single Mom Is Pretty Much Born Married. I Don't Know, But Until Your Mom Dies It Seems Like All The Other Women In Your Life Can Never Be More Than Just Your Mistress.

In The World I See You Are Stalking Elk Through The Damp Canyon Forests Around The Ruins Of Rock Feller Center. You'll Wear Leather Clothes That Will Last You The Rest Of Your Life. You'll Climb The Wrist-thick Kudzu Vines That Wrap The Sears Towers. And When You Look Down, You'll See Tiny Figures Pounding Corn, Laying Stripes Of Venison On The Empty Car Pool Lane Of Some Abandoned Superhighways.

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Yes, I Kidnapped That Lindberg Baby.

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Recycling And Speed Limits Are Bullshit. They're Like Someone Who Quits Smoking On His Deathbed.

I Like To Get People Moving And Jumping. I Think It's Good To Add More Emotion And Chaos.

If I Could Wake Up In A Different Place, At A Different Time, Could I Wake Up As A Different Person?

The Only Thing I Shy Away From Is Non-consensual Violence. I Can't Write A Story Where Someone Is A Simple Victim Because It's Boring.

You See, Life Only Turns Out Good Or Bad For Only A Little Bit. And Then It Turns Out Some Other Way.

If You Ask Me, Reincarnation Is Just Another Way To Procrastinate.

Procrastination

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last. Every Generation Hates The Next Trend In Music They Can't Understand. We Hate To Give Up Those Reins Of Our Culture. To Find Our Own Music Playing In Elevators. The Ballad For Our Revolution, Turned Into Background Music For A Television Commercial. To Find Our Generation's Clothes And Hair Suddenly Retro.

Television Commercials

To See How Boring You Really Are, Write A Book About Soap And Cults, And The Profits You Make Will Be Your Only Means Of Subsistence.

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

The First Time We Meet Another Person An Insidious Little Voice In Our Heads Says, "i Might Wear Eyeglasses Or Be Chunky Around The Hips Or A Girl, But At Least I'm Not Gay Or Black Or A Jew." Meaning: I May Be Me- But At Least I Have The Good Sense Not To Be You.

Even If I Overcompensate, Nobody Will Ever Want Me. Not Seth. Not My Folks. You Can’t Kiss Someone Who Has No Lips. Oh, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I’ll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be

We Don't Have A Great War In Our Generation, Or A Great Depression, But We Do, We Have A Great War Of The Spirit. We Have A Great Revolution Against The Culture. The Great Depression Is Our Lives. We Have A Spiritual Depression.

All God Does Is Watch Us And Kill Us When We Get Boring. We Must Never, Ever Be Boring.

Those Who Can Forget The Past Are Way Ahead Of The Rest Of Us.

Forget The Past

Most Times, It's Just A Lot Easier Not To Let The World Know What's Wrong.

Maybe Self-improvement Isn't The Answer, Maybe Self-destruction Is The Answer.

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Jan Peter Balkenende

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